Category Archives: Deception Engineering

We must be getting old, here at Routing By Rumor world headquarters, because we’re not spotting deceptive consumer practices as quickly as we used to. If you’re a regular visitor to these parts, you’ve heard us complaining about manufacturers who downsize their products, and about manufacturer’s practices we’ve termed “deception engineering“.

Case in point… When last month’s “Costco Connection” advertising and propaganda publication arrived (they call it a “lifestyle magazine” – believe that, and we have an “infomercial” we want you to watch), we found great news on page 52 (View the April edition of Costco Connection here). Costco announced, in a two-page article, that while other brands of tuna fish were shrinking their cans from six ounces to five ounces, Costco was increasing the size of their “Kirkland Signature” house brand of tuna fish, from six ounces to seven ounces. You don’t read good news like that every day. Sounds like they’re making an already good value even better. Break out the mayonnaise and strike up the band. Happy days are here again!

Or are they?

It turns out that it’s good news for Costco, but bad news for Costco members (and, we suspect, for those cute little tuna fishies). While it’s true that they have increased the size of their Kirkland Signature tuna fish by 16.6%, to seven ounces, consumers are not getting more tuna for their money. The article in their Costco Connection magazine somehow forgot to mention the fact that the price per can actually increased even more than the size of the can! Bottom line: You get more tuna per can, but the price per ounce has increased.

Silly us. We thought we might be getting more tuna fish for the same price. In actuality, while the size of the cans was increased a whopping 16.6%, the price per can has increased an even more whopping 20%. Packs of eight 6-ounce cans had sold for $9.99 in area Costco Wholesale warehouses. Now that they have introduced packs of eight 7-ounce cans, Costco has raised the selling price to $11.99, a 20% increase. By the way, didja ever notice how most grocery items at Costco seem to be sized so that the average price per package is around $10 or $12 ? Throw 9 or ten items in your cart, and you just spent at least $100. But we guess that’s the whole idea of shopping in a “warehouse” club. And why does the price of everything have to end in “.99”, ie: $9.99, $11.99, $14.99 ? We realize that Costco didn’t invent that pricing strategy, but if you’re shopping in a place like Costco, which says it caps it’s margin** (see below) at 14%, it seems like a suspicious practice to cynical little us. Like maybe if their normal markup dictates a selling price of $12.35, it gets rounded UP to $12.99, just because someone at Costco likes the number 99, and rounding it up to an even $13.00 might seem, well, excessive. Yes, we know that 13 is not an even number, but you get the point. Besides, 1300 IS an even number, which is sort of odd, when you stop and think about it. Then again, maybe we’re paranoid, and when they have an item that should sell for $12.35, they decide to give their members a break, and round the price down to $11.99. Yeah, right. All we know is that if you look at your receipt the next time you shop at Costco, just about everything except random-weight packages of meat, poulty, fish, etc., will end in “.99”. But even those random-weight items will have a unit price ending in “.99”, such as $5.99 per pound.

But then, there are a lot of odd things at Costco, like the fact that they will accept any credit card in your wallet, as long as it is from American Express. And the fact that they don’t offer grocery bags, so you end up throwing 500 loose items into your car in the parking lot. And the fact that they won’t accept any manufacturer’s cents-off coupons, unless they are distributed by Costco themselves. And the fact that they have pretty limited hours of operation, especially for the lowest-cost membership holders. And the fact (according to this New York Times article), that Costco refuses to accept food stamps (now issued as debit cards) for purchases. And the fact that you’ll find horrifically environment-unfriendly packaging of many small items (especially electronic items) at Costco, which doesn’t seem to be getting Costco members too upset. We’re talking huge plastic blister packs (which can’t be recycled, at least where we live), or combination plastic and cardboard blister packs, so that these small items are less likely to be stolen. In our opinion, some of the terribly excessive packaging at Costco and other warehouse-type retailers qualifies as a crime against the planet, even if it doesn’t happen to be illegal.

Now, we’ll admit that we aren’t going to stop buying Costco tuna fish. It’s actually excellent quality tuna. It is quite possibly the best quality tuna we have ever found, at any price. But those good folks in Seattle must think their customers are idiots. To be sure, the price per ounce has increased only slightly, and it’s still a good value. But shamelessly hyping the increased size of their cans of tuna fish, and not mentioning that it’s now more expensive and was actually a better value before they increased the size of the cans isn’t what we would consider good news or being straightforward with their customers . In our opinion, it borders on deceptive advertising. Of course, you can’t expect that manufacturers will go out of their way to let you know when they raise prices, downsize a product, or substitute cheaper ingredients, either. What we don’t like is the fact that, in our mind at least, Costco’s announcement paints a picture that it’s now a better value, when the opposite is actually true.

Since when is raising the price (per ounce, per pound, per gallon, etc.) of a product, while at the same time, forcing you to buy more of it at once, a good thing for consumers ? What ever happened to the warehouse club concept that as package size increases, so does value ?

For us, the appeal of shopping at Costco isn’t so much about price, as it is about quality. After all, shopping at Costco means an extra shopping trip, an annual membership fee, not getting your groceries bagged, often waiting in long lines at the checkout, limited shopping hours and very limited product selection. Indeed,we can buy many identical items for less at the local supermarket, especially when they’re on sale or if we use manufacturer’s coupons. What we like most about Costco is that the quality of their private-labeled items, such as their tuna fish, is generally superior to not only the national brands, but any brand at any price. Even Jimmy Kimmel shops at Costco. Watch Jimmy shopping at Costco on youtube. We never knew a trip to Costco could be so much fun.

An article entitled “Costco’s Artful Discounts” (Business Week, October 9, 2008), says this of Costco CEO James D. Sinegal… “he’s constantly pushing his buyers to find creative ways to lower prices and add value while getting his managers to crank up their efficiency efforts”. It seems to us that Costco’s new 7-ounce cans of tuna have failed to deliver the lower prices or added value which Mr. Sinegal is so fond of. What they do seem to have provided is a lot of hype for Costco’s marketing efforts, and very likely a higher profit margin because a product’s shipping and packaging costs (especially for canned items) decrease (on a percentage basis), as container size increases. There is very little difference in the cost of manufacturing a 7-ounce tin can, compared to a 6-ounce tin can. In fact, in the case of Costco tuna fish, the old and new cans use exactly the same size lid; but the walls of the can are slightly taller. Costco is also very good at finding ways to minimize shipping costs, for instance, by having their vendors redesign packages so that more of them can fit onto a standard shipping pallet. We wouldn’t be surprised if Costco’s next “improvement” to their Kirkland signature tuna will be to offer it in new and improved square cans. Think of all the space that will save in the pantry, and the fact that you won’t have to worry about your can of tuna fish rolling away, should you drop it. That’s always been a big problem for households that live in hilly areas. Now, if the United States mint would only start issuing square pennies !

1919 Australian Kooka Square Penny

So, what have we learned today, class? We’ve learned that you get less for your money when manufacturers shrink the size of their products, and sometimes, you get less for your money when manufacturers increase the size of their products. Heads, you lose. Tails, you lose.

Dear Costco… May we please have our old 6-ounce cans of Kirkland Signature tuna fish back again? They were a better value.

Then again, maybe we should just pay our money, eat our tuna fish (mercury content and torpedoes be damned), and keep our mouth shut. Mother always said you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full, and now it’s 16.6% more full.

– Routing By Rumor

** “Margin” is not the same as “markup”. For instance, if you buy an item for $1.00, and sell it for $2.00, your markup is 100%, but your margin (the percentage of the selling price that represents your profit) is only 50%. We’ve always felt that putting things in terms of profit margin instead of markup, especially as markups become greater, has the effect of making a seller’s prices seem more reasonable.

Amid the pandemic of shrinking products that is sweeping the nation, its nearly impossible to find a half-gallon container of ice cream that is still a full half-gallon, or 64 ounces.

First, manufacturers, including one of the downsizing leaders, Breyers (Unilever), shrunk their half-gallon ice cream containers to 56 ounces. More recently, almost all brands have downsized yet again, to 48 ounces (1.5 quarts). See our previous article about Breyer’s shrinking their ice cream containers. These days, the freezer at Routing By Rumor headquarters usually does without ice cream. Funny, but when we walk down the frozen food aisle in the supermarket and see the miniaturized containers of ice cream, we loose our taste for the product.

By the way, we realize that we may be jumping to conclusions by blaming the ice cream manufacturers for cheating us out of our hard-earned ice cream. It is entirely possible that this is what is actually going on.

But ice cream lovers (and lovers of value) rejoice ! If you shop at Costco Wholesale, you will still find full half-gallons of “Kirkland” ice cream. Sixty-four creamy, delicious, luxurious, decadent, fat-laden ounces. At about $4.50 per half-gallon, it’s less expensive than the anorexic-looking downsized containers of name-brand ice cream at the supermarket, which contain 25% less product. And Costco’s house brand of ice cream is available in any flavor you like, as long as it’s vanilla. That reminds us of what Henry Ford said about his Model T back in 1909. Poor Henry. He never knew the joy of shopping at Costco.

Henry Ford with his Model T Ford

One of the tenents of shopping at Costco is that you sacrifice variety for value. You also have to buy a carton of two half-gallons at a time, but how many people are going to complain that they are forced to fill up their freezer with ice cream ?

One thing you won’t have to sacrifice is quality. Costco branded products have never disappointed us. We have found them to always be superior to the national brands in quality and/or value. Here’s a particularly stark example. Gallon containers of milk are $2.25 at Costco. Many local stores charge more for a half-gallon of milk than Costco charges for a gallon ! There are many items at Costco that are priced at less than half of what you’d pay at your local supermarket.

Lest you think that we are little more than shills for Costco, you’ll want to know that we aren’t crazy about everything at Costco. While many items at Costco might be slightly less expensive than your supermarket’s everyday prices, you’ll pay less, sometimes a lot less, at your local supermarket when it’s on sale. Meat and poultry are perfect examples of this. And when you consider that many items at Costco are sold in huge packages, it won’t be a bargain if you have to throw away half of it because you couldn’t finish it before it went bad. For instance, a 25 pound sack of flour, a gallon of mayonnaise, or a five gallon jug of vegetable oil are just a bit more than we need. An interesting thing about these institutional-sized packages is that in many cases, the price per pound/quart or whatever unit of measure is used, is not significantly different from your normal supermarket-sized packages. With some items, such as Del Monte or Libby ‘s canned vegetables, you sometimes end up paying more per can at Costco, despite having to buy a case of a dozen or so cans of peas or string beans, than you would if buying a single can at the supermarket. Same thing goes for cans of soda (“pop”, for our Southern readers). We think that in some cases (pun intended), Costco hopes you think you’re getting a bargain simply because you’re forced to buy such large quantities at a single time. Call it “warehouse club buying momentum”, if you will. When you get home and start calculating whether that two-gallon jug of mustard that will last you for the next twelve years was really a good buy, you start to have some regrets, even though it was only nine cents an ounce. The bottom line is that you have to keep your guard up at all times when shopping at a warehouse club. For us, we’re better off purchasing many items at a local supermarket.

When you factor in the obligatory ID check at the entrance to Costco, which is guarded by Cerberus himself (good doggie !), and the veritable strip search before they’ll let you leave, a trip to Costco isn’t a bowl of cherries (but it is arguably a bowl of vanilla ice cream). At least Costco doesn’t conduct a cavity search. We get enough of those when we visit our dentist.

Even if you don’t have a Costco membership, you can still do better when you shop at your local supermarket. While most supermarket half-gallon house brands of ice cream have shrunk to 56 ounces, they are still a better value than the 48 ounce containers that have become the new standard among the name brands, and the house brands are usually very good quality.

Now, if Costco can manage to keep their half-gallon containers of Kirkland ice cream a full half-gallon, why can’t all the the other brands manage to do the same ? That has to qualify as one of the great mysteries of the Universe.

Jerry Edle, left, and Dave Lanz keep an eye on a large
propane tank which they are towing through a flooded cornfield,
in Oakville, Iowa, Monday, June 16, 2008. The tank floated away
during flooding. (from yahoo.com - AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

As if the American economy and the American consumer weren’t being pinched enough by $4.00 to $5.00 a gallon gasoline prices, here comes another big hit.

The flooding in the Midwest will have a major impact on corn prices (see this article), corn supply, and a ripple effect that will be felt in almost all food categories, from breakfast cereals to meat and poultry, to soft drinks and every other food item that contains corn or corn-derived ingredients. Examples of important corn-derived products are corn oil and high fructose corn syrup. They’re used to produce everything from margarine and soda pop, to french fries to bakery items. And rising prices and shortages of corn-derived ethanol will simply fuel higher gasoline prices. Ethanol production was already putting a strain on corn supplies and driving up the price of corn even before the flooding in America’s corn belt impacted this year’s crop.

Just like the rising price of crude oil, rising prices for corn will have an almost immediate impact on the cost of many of the things you buy. In fact, corn probably plays a more important role in the food chain than wheat, rice, oats, or any other grain.

If you thought the size of the box of your favorite breakfast cereal was shrinking, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If corn prices go through the roof, you’ll need a microscope to find your cereal boxes. Maybe we’ll switch to shredded wheat.

We expect that in addition to seeing rationing or purchase limits on rice at the supermarket, you’ll soon see shortages and rationing of corn and products containing corn as a major ingredient.

The CVS / Pharmacy chain of drug / variety stores (a division of CVS Caremark Corporation) was never on our list of places that provide “fair dinkum” value to consumers. That’s too bad, because they have about 6,200 stores in the United States. That makes them almost as ubiquitous as McDonald’s. Many towns have more than one CVS location.

We’re digressing, but come to think about it, McDonald’s doesn’t exactly offer great value for your money either. That’s one of the reasons we don’t eat at McDonald’s. Of course, most of the stuff they sell is so unhealthy that they’re probably doing you a favor by selling (in our opinion) barely edible food. I think we’ve set foot in a McDonald’s one time in the last five years. There must be a correlation between a chain of stores getting very large and offering poor value to consumers. And don’t get us wrong… Burger King, Wendy’s and the others aren’t any better values or (again, in our opinion) any healthier or more palatable.

The high prices at CVS are in line with the prices in convenience stores such as 7-Eleven, albeit with a much larger selection of merchandise. We only rarely walk into a CVS store, to pick up something on sale, and only if we happen to be passing by anyway. But frankly, we’re not careless enough with money to shop there otherwise. If you have a Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart or other discount store nearby, you’d have to be insane to do much shopping at CVS. Nobody we know ever confused CVS with a discount chain. To make matters even worse, they are often out of stock on the sale items we try to find there. Like many other retailers, they go through the trouble of printing and distributing a weekly sale circular, but don’t seem to be able to have much of what they are advertising in stock. Keep your stinkin’ rainchecks. To us, they seem like a poorly managed company that takes their customers to be a bunch of idiots. We’re amazed they’ve grown as large as they are and manage to stay in business. Then again, there are many horrible retailers (here’s a prime example) that seem to defy the laws of physics by being able to stay in business. Go figure.

We will often find the HIGHEST prices for many different items at CVS. Toilet paper, a favorite topic of this blogger, is no exception. On my last visit to a CVS, they were up to $1.15 for a single role of Scott Tissue’s 1000-sheet roll, which is by far, the highest retail price we’ve seen for Scott toilet paper.

CVS’s store brand of 1000 sheet, single ply toilet paper is now the smallest roll we’ve ever seen in any brand of toilet paper. It boasts a sheet size of 4.3″ x 3.66″. That makes the miniature rolls of Scott Tissue’s 4.5″ x 3.7″ sheets seem huge by comparison.

The reduction in width from 4.5″ to 4.3″ means you’re getting about 5% less paper per roll. But then they added insult to injury, by chiseling 0.04″ off the length of each sheet, compared to what most brands currently measure (after a number of product downsizings).

Really now. 3.66″ instead of 3.7″ ?

How desperate are they getting ?

Now what about the price of CVS brand toilet paper ? Did CVS shrink the price too ?

No such luck. I believe it was selling for 89 cents a roll, which by concidence, is probably the highest price I’ve ever seen for a store-brand roll of toilet paper. But then again, it’s CVS, and I’ve never heard anyone say that the “V” in CVS stands for “value”.

We don’t know about you, but we salivate at the mere mention of the stuff.

Maybe it’s the “natural” qualifier that does it for us. I mean, if Unilever used artificial Tara Gum in their Breyers Ice Cream, we wouldn’t have nearly the same hankering for the stuff. It’s sort of like the ingredient list on some foods that have water as their main ingredient. Don’t just call it water. Call it “Natural spring water”, “Triple filtered, sparkling well water” or something similar.

After posting our recent article about Unilever again shrinking the container size of Breyers Ice Cream, we found other postings on the Web which pointed out that Unilever had also recently changed their Breyers recipe to include the ingredient “tara gum”, which is used as a food thickener, similar to guar gum and locust bean gum.

Of course, you do have to wonder why Breyers, a brand of ice cream that was always so proud of its ingredients, would suddenly find it necessary to add this delectable vegetable gum to their product. We suspect that they have cheapened the recipe, probably cutting down on the dairy cream content.

We also have to wonder about Unilever. Isn’t anything sacred to this food industry behemoth? They’re messing with a brand that has always been held up as being pure and simple. They obviously have little respect for the intelligence of their customers. Do they honestly believe that prefixing “tara gum” with the adjective “natural” is going to convince consumers that this is a desirable ingredient? Why not add “natural crude oil” or “natural snake venom” to the ingredient list while you’re at it? In fact, Breyers’ very own advertisements used to poke fun at competitors who used ingredients like “guar gum” or “vegetable mono- and diglycerides” in their ice cream. Sounds like the pot is calling the kettle black, if you know what we mean. Hypocrites !

If you can stop salivating long enough to finish reading this article, we’ll fill you in on Tara gum. Until we saw the other postings about Unilever using it in Breyers Ice Cream, and then reading it on the ingredient list on a Breyers 1.5 quart carton on our most recent excursion to the supermarket, we had never heard of tara gum.

Obtained by grinding the endosperm of the seeds of Caesalpinia spinosa (Fam. Leguminosae); consists chiefly of polysaccharides of high molecular weight composed mainly of galactomannans. The principal component consists of a linear chain of (1,4)-beta-D-mannopyranose units with alpha-D-galacto-pyranose units attached by (1 6) linkages; the ratio of mannose to galactose in tara gum is 3:1.

Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? No wonder Breyers Ice Cream tastes so good. It must be the endosperm.

Oh… and what else are the seeds of this native Peruvian plant useful for? According to this article on wikipedia, “Water from boiled dried pods is also used to kill fleas and other insects“. Maybe feeding Breyers Ice Cream to your dog will take care of that flea problem.

How was Breyers / Unilever able to come up with a product that tastes just as good, but which contains fewer calories? They simply made the package smaller. Again. (They also added this secret ingredient).

For the second time recently, Breyers Ice Cream has been downsized by Unilever. Reduced. Shrunk.

For as long as this ice cream lover can remember, Breyers Ice Cream was sold in half-gallon (64 ounce) cartons. First, Unilever downsized the half-gallon carton to 1.75 quarts (56 ounces), which was a 12.5% reduction. Now, they have downsized the 1.75 quart carton to 1.5 quarts (48 ounces). This means the original half-gallon carton of Breyers is now 25% smaller at 1.5 quarts. The 1.25 quart carton of Breyers Ice Cream can’t be too far away.

To make things worse, unless we’re mistaken, the price of a carton of Breyers Ice Cream has gone up while the size has shrunk. But even at the same price per carton, a 25% decrease in product equals a 33% increase in price-per-ounce. For instance, even if the cost of a carton of Breyers held steady at a hypothetical price of $4.00, you used to get 64 ounces for that $4.00. But now, you will pay $5.33 for 64 ounces (one-and-a-third cartons), a 33% price increase. Factor in the increase in the price of a carton, and you’re probably paying 40% or 50% more than you did, say, a year ago.

We knew something was up when we opened the door to the freezer case on a recent shopping trip. The Breyers Ice Cream cartons looked smaller. The cartons look more like funnels than ice cream cartons. But it wasn’t until we looked closer that we realized that Unilever was up to their usual tricks. Breyers cartons proclaim things like “with fresh milk & cream”, “All Natural”, etc, usually as far away from where the carton weight is printed as possible. Wasn’t Breyers always made with fresh milk and cream? Why the attention-getting claims? Because Unilever’s usual way of drawing your attention away from the part of the package that states the shrinking weight of any of their products is to print some attention-getting claim somewhere else on the label. In our opinion, a pretty lame example of Deception Engineering on Unilever’s part.

Sure enough, their 1.75 quart containers of Breyers are now 1.5 quarts. Sneaky. Very sneaky. But we still noticed, so not sneaky enough. We think everyone else will notice too. If not, that’s why we’re here.

We put the Breyers back and bought another brand that offered better value. If you’re wondering whether you can still find a half-gallon of ice cream that is a full half-gallon, the answer is YES ! You can find it here, and it is still less expensive than the downsized brands.

If Unilever does two more downsizings of one-quarter of a quart each, as they have done recently, you will then be getting one quart instead of a half gallon of ice cream. Even at the same price-per-carton, that will be a cost increase of 100%. That’s double.

…but imagine how much easier it will be to carry those grocery bags home.

Thanks, Unilever.

(Psst… Hey Unilever… You should know that each time you downsize one of your products, there will be more and more of your customers who will simply conclude that it’s no longer worth buying. There’s a tipping point, at which the decline in market share begins to accelerate, and the product never recovers. An example of this is the newspaper publishing business. Ad revenues decline, so publishers cut back on content, number of pages, the size and quality of the paper they use to print the publication, etc, while at the same time raising the cover price. Readership declines, which further erodes advertising revenue. Soon, the publisher realizes it’s a loosing battle. It’s reached the vanishing point. Similar dynamics apply to consumer products.)

We’ve written at length about how companies are employing Deception Engineering to try to fool consumers. It’s usually related to a manufacturer’s attempt to camouflage the fact that you are paying more and getting less.

But the newest deception that the bloodhounds at RoutingByRumor have just picked up the scent of takes the art to a whole new level. Now, it seems to us that manufacturers such as Domino Foods, Inc. are playing games that might affect your health, if not your peace-of-mind. This is where we draw a line in the sand, and say enough is enough.

We used to be one of 7-Eleven‘s best customers. We spent a lot of money on 7-Eleven coffee. Then we discovered Quick Chek. They operate more than 100 convenience stores in New York and New Jersey. We believe Quick Chek offers much better value than 7-Eleven or just about any other convenience store. They also have many more coffee flavors than 7-Eleven offers, and a slew of goodies to let you fix your cup of coffee just the way you like it. There’s also other goodies at Quick Chek stores, like totally fee-free ATMs, where you can get cash without worrying about paying exhorbitant fees to the bank that operates their ATMs. (Of course, if your own bank really sucks, they might still hit you up with a fee for having the audacity to use another bank’s ATM. In that case, it may be time to switch banks.)

Now, if you will, let’s talk about color.

Perhaps the best way to instantly communicate is with color.

Yellow means CAUTION. Green means GO. Red means STOP.

You know that a baby dressed in blue is a BOY, and one dressed in pink is a GIRL.

In most big cities, you know to look for a yellow car when you need a TAXI CAB.

Most POLICE OFFICERS wear blue uniforms.

FIRE ALARMS are always painted red.

MONEY is green (well at least it used to be… U.S. currency has started to look tooty-fruity lately.)

MOURNERS wear black.

BRIDES wear white.

SUGAR (remember that? It’s the natural stuff) comes in white packets.

…some people will only use sugar, choosing to avoid all artificial sweeteners. But if you’re trying to limit your intake of calories, trying to avoid a sugar “rush”, or you are diabetic, there are several artificial sweeteners to choose from…

Splenda is made with the artificial sweetener sucralose, and distributed by McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, a division of Johnson & Johnson, in Fort Washington, PA. Splenda is suitable for people with diabetes.

Equal is “distributed” by Merisant US, Inc, Chicago. IL (does that mean they manufacture it also?). Equal brand sweetener (and similar products) contains the artificial sweetener aspartame. Aspartame, which is a bazillion times sweeter than sugar, gets metabolized by the body into several compounds, including phenylalanine. People who have the genetic disorder phenylketonuria or “PKU” (they are called “phenylketonurics”) must not consume Equal (or any other sweeteners made with aspartame). That is why, in the United States, at least, products containing phenylalanine must carry the warning “PHENYLKETONURICS: CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE“.

The above packet colors are recognized by just about every coffee and tea drinker in the world that have eyes in their head. Those packet colors are as God intended them to be. Anything else would be blasphemy. If you have PKU, using the wrong colored packet could be deadly. If you are allergic to cancer, you might likewise wish to avoid certain colored packets. Of course, there is a school of thought that says everything that is man-made causes cancer. Perhaps, but life is a mine field, full of choices, and you have to make the best choices you can, based on the available information. A little dose of common sense goes a long way, too. Here’s an excellent article about artificial sweeteners and cancer risk from the National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

With the aforementioned knowledge firmly in your grasp, you know immediately, for instance, that this packet…

…contains saccharin, since it is pink. If you want to check, flip the packet over…

But Quick Chek’s little blue packets have looked a little different lately, for instance…

…but hey, it’s still blue, so it must be aspartame. Let’s flip it over just to be safe…

Thought we wouldn’t notice, did ya? There’s no aspartame in THIS little blue packet. It contains saccharin. That’s pretty sneaky, don’t you think? And it raises the following question: Why is this packet blue?

So Quick Chek’s little pink packets, as well as their little blue packets, both now contain saccharin. That sucks, pure and simple. We don’t know if the decision to put saccharin into blue packets was Quick Chek’s idea, Domino Sugar’s (Domino Foods) idea, or a joint decision. At this writing, we also do not know if this practice is more widespread than just Domino or Quick Chek.

Why on Earth would they do something like that? Could it be an honest mistake? Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they used the wrong color paper to make the packets. You don’t think this may be a case of Deception Engineering, do you? I mean, why in the world would the nice people at Quick Chek (or at Domino Foods) try to fool you about what’s in those little blue packets? Aren’t these businesses concerned that they are destroying consumer’s trust in their brands… or does the profit motive blind them to any ethical considerations?

Just thinking out loud for a second, could it be because saccharin is a fraction of the cost of aspartame? For instance, Sweet N Low brand sweetener has always been much less expensive than Equal brand or Splenda brand sweeteners, and the same holds true for the generic versions of saccharin versus aspartame. (We don’t believe there’s a generic version of Splenda on the market, since we’ve never seen generic yellow packets of Splenda-like sweetener.)

This is about much more than which sweetener tastes better. There are many consumers who avoid using saccharin because of concerns that it may be a carcinogen. The fact is that from 1981 thru 2000, saccharin was listed by the U.S. government as a possible carcinogen. Products containing saccharin were required to carry the following warning: “Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.” Saccharin was removed from the carcinogen list after further research failed to confirm any link to cancer, but many people, including this author, avoid all foods containing saccharin. We are not amused with the fact that Domino Foods, Quick Check, and probably other manufacturers and retailers, are apparently trying to slip saccharin past us, no doubt in an effort to save money. If you wish to avoid products containing saccharin, read our related article, “What’s In That Cup Of Diet Soda?“.

We suspect that this article will elicit a lot of comments from readers who are as outraged as we were to discover this deception.